“Thanks a lot, Margot,” the woman says, lying back down on the bed, her arms spread.
Margot instructs Sweetness to undress and climb onto the bed next to Miss Novia Scott-Henry. For a moment the girl hesitates. Margot dares her with her eyes. The girl obeys, slipping out of her dress like a child. Margot retreats into the closet to hide and fishes for the disposable camera she carried. She watches as Sweetness leans forward and undoes the woman’s buttons. The woman stirs, but only a little. Sweetness rises to the challenge. She takes charge, looking like a lioness perched on all fours, her back arched, her magnificent rear swooping up from her spine, and her hands like paws. Miss Novia Scott-Henry inches closer to Sweetness once the coolness from the air conditioner tickles her nakedness. She scoots closer to the warmth Sweetness’s body offers, and matches her pulse. But that illusion is the drug’s secret drive — the control it tricks her into believing is hers, the excitement, the promise, the rubbed-down edge of fear. Her mind is no longer able to outsmart her body, for her body knows by instinct what it ought to do. Every single muscle of her body seems to be trembling, quivering, twitching. They are magnificent, the both of them, moving like silkworms. Margot misses Verdene this way, lowering the camera after capturing enough pictures of Miss Novia Scott-Henry and Sweetness. She is forced to turn away from the sight of them, her own hunger — her own primal want — begging to be assuaged. Margot takes her things, the recorder, and, for good measure, Sweetness’s clothes, shoes, and handbag too. She tiptoes out the door, leaving it open for this private dream to become public.
17
DELORES COMES HOME FROM THE MARKET AND IMMEDIATELY begins to cook dinner, her stocky frame pouring over the small stove. She wipes her face with the collar of her blouse and stirs the cowfoot soup, mindlessly dashing into it salt and pepper and pimento seeds, talking to herself about the day’s sales.
“Ah told di man twenty dollah. Jus’ twenty dollah. Him so cheap that him pull out a ten. Say him want me to go down in price. But see here, now, massah. What can ten dollah do?” She laughs and leans over to taste the soup, her face scrunching as always as she reaches for more salt. “Eh, eh!”
“Mama, I have something to show yuh,” Thandi says, taking small steps toward Delores, clutching the sketchpad filled with her drawings. The fire is high under the pot, and the house smells of all the spices. “What is it now?” her mother says. “Have you seen yuh sistah since mawnin’?”
“No, Mama.”
“Where the hell is that girl?” Delores turns to Thandi, her eyes big and wide like a ferocious animal. “Ah tell yuh, yuh sistah is siding wid the devil. Several nights in a row she coming home in di wee hours. Is which man she sleeping wid now, eh?”
“I don’t know. She neva tell me anything.”
Delores laughs, throwing her head back so that her braids touch the back of her neck. She seeks the counsel of the shadows in the kitchen, the ones that lurk from the steady flame of the kerosene lamp. “Yuh see mi dying trial?” she says to the shadows. “Now she keeping secrets from me.” She turns back to Thandi. “You tell yuh sistah that if she have a man, him mus’ be able to help pay Mr. Sterling our rent. Our rent was due two days ago. Two days! And Margot deh ’bout, playing hooky wid god knows who. Or what.”
Thandi remains silent, hugging the sketchpad to her chest. It steadies her. She considers her mother’s back, the broad shoulders, the cotton blouse soaked with perspiration, the strong arms that look as though they could still carry her, the wide hips, the swollen feet shoved inside a pair of old men’s slippers. She listens to her mother talk to the shadows crouched in every corner of their shack. Thandi looks away from each of them, her eyes finding her mother’s back again. “I want to draw,” she says out loud. Delores stops moving. She turns around to face Thandi.
“So why don’t you sit and draw?” Delores asks. “See di table dere. Draw.”
“I mean I want to do it for a living. I want to—”
“Hold on a second.” Delores puts both hands on her hips, her big chest lifting as though filling with all the wind and words she would eventually let out to crush Thandi’s dreams. “Yuh not making any sense right now. Yuh not making no sense a’tall, a’tall.”
“I am really good at it,” Thandi says. Her fingers tremble as she turns each page, showing her mother sketch after sketch. Her mother takes the book from her and examines a drawing of a half-naked woman standing in front of a mirror. Thandi is certain she recognizes the mirror. It’s the one on the vanity. Thandi holds her breath as her mother studies the image. Brother Smith says she’s good. “You’re a natural, Thandi.” All she has to do is strengthen her portfolio. Thandi looks at the page her mother is looking at, wishing that she had been more precise with parts of the sketch that seem amateur under her mother’s scrutiny. She balances her weight on both legs, wringing her hands, then putting them to her sides, since she doesn’t know what else to do with them. Delores is silent for a long time. Too long. “What yuh think?” Thandi finally asks. “I was working on it for Mother’s Day, but it took longer than I thought.”
But Delores is shaking her head. “Yuh draw dis?” she asks Thandi without taking her eyes off the woman on the paper.
“Yes,” Thandi responds. “It’s for you. A belated Mother’s Day gift.” But Delores returns the book to Thandi without saying a word. She resumes cooking, stirring the pot of cowfoot soup.
“I want to be an artist. Maybe yuh can start to sell my drawings to yuh customers.” Thandi continues to talk as though talking to herself. “I’m really good at it. Brother Smith says I’m really talented. He nominated me to compete for an art prize at school. He even said I could go to a school for art.”
Delores stirs and stirs the pot, Thandi’s words seeming to drown in the bubbling soup.
“Mama, yuh listening?” Thandi touches Delores’s arm. “Mama, yuh hear me? I want to go to art school and I only need five subjects.”
“I’m busy,” is all Delores says. “I’m sending you to school to learn. So yuh g’wan be something good in life. Nothing less. Don’t come to me wid dis again, yuh hear? Yuh is no damn artist. We too poor for that. Yuh g’wan be a doctor. People can’t mek a living being no ch’upid artist. Do you see the Rastas selling in di market making money wid dem art?”
Thandi shakes her head, her eyes on the floor. “But there are different types of artists, Mama.”
“Different types of artist, mi backside! G’wan go learn yuh books, yuh hear? The CXC is jus’ around di corner. Why yuh entering a blasted prize fah? Why yuh not studying? Yuh need all nine subjects to be the doctor yuh want to be. Not a ch’upid prize.”
“You want me to be a doctor.” Thandi puts the sketchpad down on the dining table.
Delores peers at her. “Thandi, what yuh saying to me?”
Thandi cowers under the weight of her mother’s glare, her heartbeat echoing in her eardrums, her face hot. “Nothing,” she replies.
“Is who filling up yuh head with all this, eh?” Delores asks.
“I have a mind of my own, you know,” Thandi says. She walks outside into the darkness that consumes her, leaving the back door open.
“Where yuh going? Dinner will be ready soon!” Delores calls after her. But Thandi doesn’t respond. She’s too tired. She leans against the back of the house and slides down to her buttocks.